CoreMedia (news, site) has launched the latest version of their Web Content Management System paying particular attention to the needs of business users as they develop the online customer experience for their organization. Let's have a look at how they do it.

The Evolution of Web Content Management

Web Content Management has changed greatly in the last couple of years. We have gone from the traditional systems where we simply create and manage web content to a much more complex approach to personalizing our websites and engaging with our customers. We call it Web Engagement Management (or Web Experience Management), and many of today's WCM vendors have been adapting their platforms to support it.

Today CoreMedia has released CoreMedia 6, focusing not just on optimizing the online customer experience, but also enabling business users to work without the intervention of IT.

The Importance of Contextualization

You know that no two customers are alike. For that matter, a single customer can change how they interact with your organization, going from say visiting your website via a PC to visiting your website via their iPhone. As a result, it has become important for organizations to not only provide a personalized experience to their customers, but to continue to adapt that experience based on what the customer does and how they interact with that organization.

This is called contextualization. And it's a key element of CoreMedia 6.

The other key element with CoreMedia 6 is that business users are provided the tools to continually monitor and adapt the online experience based on customer preferences and habits. The platform is a comprehensive approach to understanding customers and delivering truly personalized online experiences.

So what exactly is CoreMedia 6?

CoreMedia 6 Product Portfolio

CoreMedia 6 is focused on harmonizing the content ecosystem (all that content and information about your products and your users), designing the best experience possible and customizing that experience on demand.

CoreMedia 6 Portfolio

CoreMedia Studio

New in CoreMedia 6 is the CoreMedia Studio, a business user tool used to design, craft and compose the whole experience. The Studio provides an environment where the business user can view, in a single location, all the content and information needed to make proper decisions about users and create the best experience possible.

Note that all the information remains in what ever system it is originally stored in, it is simply viewable in a single location inside the Studio. This can include content from content management systems, social software repositories, analytics data and other third party content repositories (db or otherwise).

Rules and Recommendations

Using this information, business users can define test user contexts and business rules and design and preview experiences for for those contexts.

Adaptive Device Delivery

It's no secret that the website is only one online channel in use today. Mobile is the other, including touch screen devices like the iPhone, Android and iPad). Using CoreMedia Studio, business users are able to create the unique experiences required for different devices without the assistance of IT.

Essentially, business users create mobile web apps that recognize the device being used and deliver the optimal experience. They offer the same usability and flexibility as mobile apps, but they are web-based. Now this is actually different from vendors who are creating specific applications for specific devices.

Glenn Conradt, global vice president of Marketing, CoreMedia explained that thanks to HTML 5, web applications can provide a rich experience similar to mobile applications. The reality is that it's just too expensive to offer specific apps for the numerous amount of devices and smartphones available. Web-based applications provide a faster time to market and put the creation capabilities into the hands of business users who know what the customer is looking for (or they should know).

Adaptive Personalization

CoreMedia has updated their adaptive personalization capabilities and added new features like the Context Rule Creator in the Studio. Personalization is about more than simply providing a different experience based on say, location or role. This is where context is critical and platforms need to be able to learn from what their users are doing and adapt the experience as necessary.

Mastermind of the Experience

CoreMedia believes that innovation should be in the hands of users who understand the business and the needs of the consumers. That's what the CoreMedia Studio is all about, making the business users the "mastermind of the experience".

They aren't the only WCM vendor that thinks this way (and I expect more will come within the next year). In October, Alterian announced Alchemy, a similar tool to the Business Studio that enables business users to manage the customer experience.

In that solution (framework), they also pull content and information sources into a single location to view and analyze, and then create the online experience. Alchemy is not yet in full release (that's expected in March), and is not completely identical to CoreMedia Studio (Alchemy integrated the offline channels, and CoreMedia offers testing capabilities among other features), but the idea of contextualization is the same.

CoreMedia 6 is available now. So if you are looking to empower your business users and deliver the optimal online experience, have a closer look.

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